Aleksandra Faust

Aleksandra Faust is a Senior Research Scientist at Google Brain Robotics, specializing robot motion planning and reinforcement learning. Previously, Aleksandra led machine learning efforts for self-driving car planning and controls in Waymo, and was a researcher in Sandia National Laboratories. She earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico (with distinction), and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include machine learning for safe, scalable, and socially-aware motion planning, decision-making, and robot behavior. Aleksandra won the Tom L. Popejoy Award for the best doctoral dissertation at the University of New Mexico in Engineering, Mathematics, and Sciences in the period of 2011-2014, and was named Distinguished Alumna by the University of New Mexico School of Engineering. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, ZdNet, and ​was awarded Best Paper in Service Robotics at ICRA 2018.